


Not all of us have capes

by bugzadc



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-16 22:57:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9293330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bugzadc/pseuds/bugzadc
Summary: Life hasn't been easy for Kara since Cat left. A phone call, ice cream, an excessive number of pizzas and a series of conversations change all that.





	

She’s not sure what she’s doing staring at Cat’s – no, at Ms. Grant’s - number in her phone. It’s not as if her boss has bothered to keep in touch since she left CatCo 10 months ago.

It’s not as if she’s ever checked in even once – not even that one time Kara knows she was in town for the annual National City New Year’s gala.

The apartment was quiet around Kara as she sat curled up on her couch and rubbed her thumb up and down the side of her phone. She knew she should hit number one on her speed dial and call Alex; she knows she should.

Ms. Grant had shown no interest in talking to her.

Kara sighed, hit the call button and slumped forward, resting her face in the palm of one hand while raising the phone up to her ear with the other.

The phone rang and Kara froze when she heard her voice.

“Kiera?”

Kara hadn’t expected her to pick up. She was sure she had hit the speed dial for Alex.

“Ms. Grant, hi, um – I’m so sorry,” Kara said. “I meant to call my sister and my finger must have slipped and I dialed you instead and I am so, so sorry. I’m just going to go now and let you go back to your day. Ok? Bye.”

Kara was mid-reach for the end call button when she heard Ms. Grant’s voice.

“Well since I have you on the phone anyway, how are you?”

Kara took a deep breath and raised the phone back up to her ear.

“Fine. Fine. I’m fine,” Kara said.

Cat laughed.

“Fine? Nobody who says they’re fine is fine, Kiera,” Cat said. “And shouldn’t you be more than fine? I left you with the man you spent months pining after and the dream job. You should be at peak Sunny Danvers.”

Kara snorted.

“James and I lasted all of two days, Ms. Grant,” Kara said. “You’d know that if you’d bothered to check in. And the job? It’s not right. It hasn’t felt right since I started.”

Kara got up from the couch, suddenly full of nervous energy, and headed toward her kitchen.

“What? Kara, what are you talking about?”

Kara yanks open her freezer door and stares at the rows of ice cream pints. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to say, what she could say. Kata finally settled on an ice cream flavor and a question.

“Is it, is it always like this,” Kara asked eventually. “The feeling that you’re never doing enough. The feeling that reporting on crime, on corruption, on poverty, on whatever – that it’s all just too little, too late. That it isn’t really helping anyone.”

Kara pulled out a container of mint chocolate chip, grabbed for a spoon and pried the lid off her ice cream.

“Is this about the K6 epidemic story you’ve been working on?”

Kara’s first spoonful was midway to her mouth when she realized what the question meant. Ms. Grant had been paying attention – at least to her work. It was something.

“You’ve been reading my stuff,” Kara said.

“Not stuff, Kiera: articles,” Cat said. “ And of course I read your articles. You think I’d let you out into the world and not keep track of you?”

“It seemed that way, Ms. Grant,” Kara said. “It’s been nearly a year.”

“Kara, what happened?”

“What happened? What happened is that you left,” Kara said. “You left and maybe it isn’t as easy to feel hope without you here. Maybe it isn’t possible.”

The other end of the line was quiet. It’s quiet for too long. Ms. Grant had always known what to tell Kara in the past – Cat knew what she needed to hear. But maybe her former boss picked up now only out of some sense of habit. Maybe she didn’t have advice. Maybe she didn’t care to offer any. Kara didn’t know, but she couldn’t stand the silence that was coming from the end of the line anymore.

“I guess I can’t rely on you for the answers any more now though,” Kara said. “Not when I’m supposed to be diving. Goodbye, Ms. Grant.”

XXXXXXX

The next morning Kara begrudgingly stared at her reporter’s notebook and recorder, willing herself to pick them up and slide them into her bag. She was almost glad when there was a knock at the door, even though she didn’t really want to talk to anyone.

She walked over to her door and opened it, expecting Alex, Winn, a neighbor – anything but the blonde whirlwind who was already brushing past Kara, pulling off her sunglasses as she walked.

“Really, Kiera. I’m not going to just come flying in every time you have a crisis of conscience. Not all of us have a cape,” Ms. Grant said.

Kara froze Cat Grant was in her apartment. Cat Grant, who Kara knows was on the other side of the country just 10 hours ago, had just brushed past her into the apartment as if she owned it. Cat Grant was here.

“Ms. Grant? What are you doing here? You can’t just walk in here.”

“Oh?” Ms. Grant arched an eyebrow as she walked toward Kara’s kitchen. “Is there any coffee in this tiny box you live in?”

It took a minute for Kara to school her features. She knows her face shows everything she’s feeling – Alex has mentioned it to her often enough. She needed to get Cat out of her apartment. She wasn’t ready to talk to her. She definitely wasn’t ready to talk to her here, in her apartment.

“Ms. Grant, if you want to talk we can catch up later,” Kara said. “I’m going to be late for work.”

Cat leaned back against Kara’s kitchen table and gave her an appraising look.

“You’re going into work? It sounded to me like you had given up on the job,” Cat said. “It looks terrible for my protégé to just give up. So I’m here to tell you to pull up your big girl panties and head to Catco.”

Kara grit her teeth together for the briefest of moments before arranging her face into the best approximation of disinterested she can manage in front of Cat.

“Of course I’m going to work,” Kara said. “Snapper doesn’t tolerate late employees any more than you did.”

Cat picked up Kara’s notebook from the table and began flipping through the pages, checking out Kara’s notes on the story she had spent the last few weeks drowning in.

“Tell me what happened, Kara.”

A new drug hit National City six months ago, Kara told Cat. Police were calling it K6 - its effects were similar to the K2 being sold in New York, but three times worse. Kara had attended a presser on the drug not long after NCPD started investigating K6.

She spent months sitting in the CatCo newsroom, ears focused on the wall of police scanners while she did her work. Kara shot out of the office every single time the scanners crackled to life with reports of K6. She’d fly to the scene and do her best to help as Supergirl before changing back into her regular clothing to take notes and pictures for Snapper.

“Not pretending to be ordinary anymore,” Cat asked.

Kara snorted.

“Let’s not pretend you haven’t known pretty much from the start.”

Kara delved back into explaining what had happened over the past year, how she focused all her efforts on figuring out the source of the K6. And then one day, after months of interviews, months of research, months of being too slow - she figured out where the K6 was being produced and distributed.

“I was on my way out of the newsroom when I ran into Snapper,” Kara said.

_“Ponytail, I need you to transcribe Sasha’s interview with the Mayor. She doesn’t have time for it and your fast typing is the one thing you’re good for.”_

_Ponytail, he called her - still, months after she joined the team. She didn’t know what she had to do to prove she was a reporter to him. So she told him where she was going. It was her greatest accomplishment to date as a reporter and she wanted to wipe that permanent smirk off his face._

_It didn’t work._

_“You’re not equipped for something like that, Ponytail.It would break your brain,” Snapper said. “I’ll send Erickson.”_

_Kara insisted - she could handle it. She had been planning to cape up, fly over, deal with the bad guys - and then get to the reporter side of things._

_Snapper just wouldn’t listen. Eventually, he agreed to let Kara check out the warehouse herself, but he was coming with her._

_The two had snuck in together. Someone inside spotted them on the third floor. He ended up shooting at them. One of the shots smashed into a tube full of something and the liquid inside burst into flame; it rushed outward and consumed everything in its path._

Kara paused then, trying her best to figure out how to tell Cat that she had failed. But Cat already knew what happened and spoke up, knowing how hard it must be for Kara to say the words.

“That was the fire that killed two people?”

There had been two men up on the 4th floor. They didn’t get out.

“It was two more people I couldn’t save,” Kara paused. “No, not couldn’t: wouldn’t. I was so focused on getting out of there with Snapper without him figuring out that I’m Supergirl. And they just died.”

“Kara -”

“No. There’s nothing you can say here,” Kara said, picking up her bag from the table. “And now I really have to go or I’ll be late to work even with super speed.”

“This conversation isn’t done, Kara. I will be here later.”

Kara stared at Cat, assessing the look on her face. Cat had promised Kara that she’d always have a place by her side before, but then she’d left. Her track record at sticking around wasn’t the best.

“Maybe ,” Kara said as walked out of her apartment.

XXXXXXX

Kara was carrying a stack of pizzas when she got home late that night. She walked right over to her kitchen counter, opened up a box and dug in.

“That alien metabolism of yours really isn’t fair.”

She was still here. Kara had spent the day hoping Cat would be, but she never thought the other woman would actually stay. She’d spent hours at work and then flew patrols throughout the city, not wanting to come back to the empty apartment she had been sure would be waiting for her.

“Ms. Grant. I didn’t think you’d still be here,” Kara said, turning around. “You want a slice?”

“You know me, Kara - I don’t eat greasy food unless it’s on top of a salad.”

Cat walked over to Kara and leaned against the counter next to her. It was the closest the two had been since they’d shared a moment on Cat’s balcony before the woman jetted off.

Kara couldn’t look up at Cat. Her still being there, being so close, it was too much.

“What did you mean last night when you said it wasn’t as easy to feel hope without me here,” Cat asked.

Kara froze. Not that - anything but that. It wasn’t until Cat had left National City nearly a year ago that Kara realized just how important her former boss was to her, how much of a steadying presence she was in Kara’s life.

She took another bite of pizza and chewed, searching for the right words to say - the words that would be honest, but wouldn’t give Cat the ability to widen the hole Kara had felt since Cat left.

“I meant exactly what I said on the phone. I don’t, I don’t like it. I should be able to manage without you here,” Kara said. “I shouldn’t have told you that last night, but part of me knows that all of this would have just been better if you had been here.”

Kara winced. She hadn’t meant to tell Cat that last part.

Cat hesitated for a moment before she reached out and placed one of her hands on the kitchen counter next to one of Kara’s hands. Kara’s jaw twitched when she noticed Cat’s hand.

Come on, move, she willed her hand to slide over just a smidge so she’d actually be touching Cat’s hand. Her breath caught the moment she managed it. Kara shifted and leaned in.

But then Cat’s phone rang and Kara flinched, realizing just how close she was to Cat. A blush crept in on Kara’s face as she pulled her shoulders in tightly away from Cat. The phone rang again.

“You should get that,” Kara said.

Cat grabbed Kara’s wrist in her hand and leaned forward. “No.” The phone rang again, and again. Cat stared at Kara and waited for the call to end.

“I may have thought that things would be better if you were around on several occasions myself,” Cat said once her phone stopped ringing.

Kara’s head jerked back in surprise and she sucked in a sharp breathe. Her heart was pounding in her ears as she looked at Cat. Maybe it was time to try diving again.

She inched forward slowly and wrapped a hand around Cat’s waist. She paused. “Are you, I mean, do you, can I - ”

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” Cat huffed out, pulling Kara’s face down toward her and kissing her.

Kissing - She’s kissing Cat Grant. Kara’s so tired, she’s been so tired. But that all fell away the moment her lips touched Cat’s.

Kara’s eyes were closed when Cat pulled back. She looked - Cat didn’t know how to describe the look on Kara’s face, but Cat knew she needed a moment. She cleared her throat.

“I think I’ll take a slice of that pizza now,” Cat said, reaching toward the open box.

Kara’s eyes narrowed as she shoved the stack of pizza boxes away from Cat. Four pizzas spilled onto the floor.

"That’s not like you to waste food," Cat said

Kara quirked an eyebrow and grinned. 

"On very rare occasions, there are more important things than pizza," Kara said. "Things like potstickers."

"Oh shut up and kiss me."


End file.
